Meet the Participants in the Guild’s Pilot New/s Incubator

This autumn, the Guild of Future Architects has been thrilled to launch its first New/s Incubator, designed to support diverse, member-led teams to articulate a shared vision for how their journalism projects will engage stakeholders—including audiences, participants, and funders. Given the daunting range of challenges facing both journalists and society, we are designing a process that we hope is restorative and opens up space for imagination and deep connection to community.

This New/s Incubator will run through early 2022, and involves a mix of GoFA’s signature learning programs alongside new offerings created by members. The design is based on an earlier incubator that GoFA ran in 2020, with a focus on adapting the curriculum to serve those who work in news and media.

The promise of the larger three-year New/s initiative is not to “save” journalism — but to help remake it through surfacing and championing new visions from women, LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC innovators for how reporting can serve communities whose stories have historically been suppressed. Learn more about our goals and the genesis of the project in research funded by the Ford Foundation.

Meet the Teams

To foster co-creation, we wanted to keep the process intimate. So we only selected two projects to focus on this year:

The IF Lab Newsroom
GoFA member Tayyib Smith, co-founder of Philadelphia-based entrepreneurship hub IF Lab, will work with his team to explore the concept of a newsroom staffed by a mix of experienced Black and Brown journalists collaborating with youth who aspire to work in media. From IF Lab’s Kensington HQ, this cohort of professionals and up-and-coming makers would work with a managing editor, instructors, and mentors to report from and with their communities and to jointly develop innovative journalism business models. This initiative draws insights from an earlier initiative that Smith co-founded, the Institute of Hip Hop Entrepreneurship. Team members include Cassie Owens, Mike Thomas, and Karen Warrington.

HBCUx
GoFA member Erin Michelle Washington — the founder of Atlanta-based creative content space SoulCenter and an assistant professor at Spelman College — will work with her team to incubate a project designed to rewrite the story of theater graduates from historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). The goal of this storytelling hub —currently envisioned as an app — will be to create space for student and early-career “Blk” artists to share and celebrate their practice. Washington explains: “Blk is a queered frame we engage to look at the multiplicity of blkness. Blk as a state of being, as a modality of thought.” Participants from a coalition of 7 HBCUs will connect and contribute stories, data, and ideas about how to center a liberatory narrative and jointly vision a new Blk arts future. Team members include Nijeul X. Porter, Lakisha May, Toran X. Moore, and Aaliyah Simms.

We chose these two projects from a competitive field of applicants because they each are compelling and have the potential to inform other innovators across the country. We were looking for teams interested in bringing new people, processes, and power relations to the field, and these fit the bill.

Also, we paired them because we can see strong resonances between them. Both aim to work with young, ambitious makers outside of traditional journalism structures. Both have a focus on placemaking — the first in Philadelphia, and the second across the South. We know that there are lessons to be learned by combining or comparing journalistic and artistic storytelling approaches. The two teams inspire one another, and we are learning from both of them.

Behind the Scenes

Since the spring, GoFA’s Program Manager Evan Blaise Walsh has been co-designing the New/s Incubator with me, drawing upon both his knowledge of the Guild’s ever-evolving programs and his background in producing groundbreaking participatory experiences with organizations such as artist collective For Freedoms, the Sundance Film Festival, Guardian US, and others. A Philadelphia-based photographer, writer, and curator, Evan brings his own work on issues related to chosen family, power, and the mythologies of masculinity to our larger project of expanding the boundaries and dynamics of journalism.

“What has been most striking about the New/s Incubator is the incredible generosity of spirit the teams and facilitators have shown to one another — a reflection of the Guild’s overall mission to center the intangible power of human connection as a pathway to create beauty together, and to unlock our collective potential,” says Walsh.

To support these teams on their journey through the New/s Incubator, we are also lucky to be joined by another GoFA member, Christie George. She is advising on program design and serving as a mentor to the teams. Christie was most recently the President of New Media Ventures, an impact investing fund focused on media, technology and democracy. She currently works as an independent strategy consultant, based on more than 20 years of experience working at the intersection of media, culture, and politics.

“The New/s incubator has made a compelling case for reframing how we think about innovation in terms of people, processes and power relationships,” George says. “I’m thrilled to be experimenting with new models of co-creation with such a dynamic and powerful community.”

Throughout, GoFA’s Sharon Chang and Kamal Sinclair have offered guidance, insights from the previous incubator, and feedback on our selection process. Thanks also to Ryat Yezbick for helping us to choose our teams.

Involving Guild members who can offer a wide range of disciplinary expertise and life experience to these teams is also sparking new ideas and connections:

• Rob Sinclair is joining us throughout the incubator, serving as an emcee, leading the teams through the Futurist Writers’ Room, and contributing his own perspective as a writer and performer.
• Micheline Berry is bringing elements of the 5C Meditation program she developed for the Guild’s first incubator into the sessions to help participants build their somatic awareness and explore themes of curiosity, curation, coordination, commitment, and creation.
• Tony Patrick, Aisha Shillingford, and Melinda Weekes-Laidlow are designing original programs for this incubator, related to two Future Architecture pillars of practice: Personal Transformation and Group Cohesion.
• Miguel Rivera beautifully helped us to open up the incubator with a reflection on our ancestors and shared purpose, and so far members Elissa Blount Moorhead, Karim Ahmad, and Kadallah Burrowes have participated as advisors in various programs.

Midway through this incubator, we are energized by the imagination and passion that the two teams are bringing to cultivating their projects, and the brilliance of the Guild’s network. We will continue to share our discoveries along the way.